THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: DIPLOMACY

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: DIPLOMACY; Powell Says U.S. Will Withdraw Troops From Iraq if New Government Makes Request

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and WARREN HOGE; Steven R. Weisman reported from Washington and Warren Hoge from the United Nations for this article.

Published: May 15, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 14—
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was joined by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy and Japan on Friday in declaring that they would honor any request by Iraq's new government to withdraw foreign troops after June 30, when it is to receive limited sovereignty.

Speaking after a meeting of officials from leading industrial nations, Mr. Powell and his colleagues emphasized that they did not expect such a request to come. It inconceivable, they asserted, for anyone to doubt that a troop pullout would lead to chaos and violence in Iraq.

But the envoys evidently felt compelled to clarify the issue after some testimony in Congress on Thursday left the administration's intentions unclear. ''I have no doubt that the interim Iraqi government will welcome the continued presence and operation of coalition military forces,'' Mr. Powell said, adding that he was ''absolutely losing no sleep thinking that they might ask us to leave.''

But he said that, in the interest of clearing up any confusion, ''were this interim government to say to us, 'We really think we can handle this on our own; it would be better if you were to leave,' we would leave.''

Although few outside experts say they expect an Iraqi government to ask for a withdrawal of American and other allied forces, the issue has come up this week with the vehement anti-American reaction among Iraqis to the prison abuse scandal.

At the House International Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, a top aide to Mr. Powell, Marc Grossman, was asked repeatedly what would happen if such feelings erupted after sovereignty is transferred. After resisting an answer, he finally said the United States would honor such a request.

Mr. Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs, was then contradicted by Lt. Gen. L. Walter Sharp, director of strategic plans for the military's joint staff, who said an Iraqi pullout request would not be valid unless it were made by an elected government due to take office next year.

Mr. Powell and his colleagues were evidently ready for the question at their news conference at the State Department after a long day of meetings, including a brief session with President Bush at the White House. The foreign ministers of Italy, Britain and Japan chimed in endorsing Mr. Powell's answer.

Despite the certainty of their responses, the determination of the envoys to set the record straight underscored the disarray and ambiguity right now in their plans for the future governance of Iraq.

Mr. Powell and the other envoys said they were still discussing broad concepts for the wording of a United Nations Security Council resolution defining the new Iraqi government's security powers, as well as its control of oil revenues, the prison system and other matters.

It was obvious from various public comments here and elsewhere that they had some distance to go to bridge their differences, which mainly focus on a demand by France, Russia and some others that the Iraqi government be given wide powers over its own affairs and that a multinational force be given a timetable to leave.

The United States is resisting making such provisions explicit, diplomats involved in the process say.

In New York on Friday, for example, Jean-Marc de la Sablière, the French envoy to the United Nations, said a caretaker government should have the right to object to orders from American officers sending Iraqi soldiers into combat.

''Imagine the Iraqis being asked to go into Karbala or whatever place and not having the right to say no,'' Mr. de la Sablière told reporters. ''It would be absurd to have the Iraqi armed forces engaged without the consent of the Iraqi government.''

In Washington, a senior administration official dismissed this demand as unnecessary, saying that it was self-evident that no one could order Iraqi troops to take an action against their will. ''Are we going to send them into battle at the point of a gun?'' this official said.

Nevertheless, the French comment underscored an emerging theme in the discussions over a future Security Council resolution, with France and Russia once again taking the lead -- as they did in the months before the war -- in raising a challenge to the American approach.

In this case, diplomats say there is hope of averting a clash.

The Bush administration is planning for an Iraqi government to emerge in the next couple weeks from a selection process led by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, who is in Baghdad with the task of bringing such a government full blown ''as from the brow of Zeus,'' as a State Department official commented recently.

The foreign ministers conferring in Washington on Friday were also from Germany, Canada and the European Union. All were in town to prepare for the Group of 8 summit meeting of leading industrial nations on Sea Island, Ga., next month.

As they struggled to narrow their differences on Iraq, the envoys said they were also trying to refine a planned appeal, the Greater Middle East Initiative, calling for democratic reforms in that region. An eight-page draft circulated this week among the envoys, but many were reported on Friday to have found it overly long and cumbersome.

Javier Solana, chief foreign affairs adviser to the European Union, said some progress had been made in shortening a document that, in its longer version, had been viewed by Arab leaders as imperialistic in tone. More important than whatever the Group of 8 does, he said, is what the Arab League decides in another week. ''After the declarations are all adopted, the important thing will be the implementation,'' Mr. Solana said. ''That will be the real test.''